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Diversity and inclusion good for business

TD executive says corporate commitment pays

Sohail Ilyas, who is deaf, explains his job with sign language to a colleague at his branch in Scarborough, ON. He works with TD insurance applications data.

Photograph by: Hugh Wesley
, Postmedia News

Life has been an uphill battle for Sohail Ilyas. Profoundly deaf, he had little hope of a great future in his native Pakistan. He had found work teaching the hearing impaired but what he dreamt of was an office job or, better still, a corporate career.

In 2006 he took a huge leap of faith. He asked his fiancee to wait while he sought a better life for them and immigrated to Canada.

"What I saw in Canada was a land with far greater opportunities," he says through a sign-language interpreter. "There was infrastructure here to support the deaf. There were associations and there was a growing sensitivity among employers."

But that dream of a corporate career eluded him. Instead he found a series of retail sales positions until he attended MayFest, an annual gathering of the hearing impaired, four years ago.

"The Toronto Dominion Bank had a booth and I was amazed," he says. "They not only had interpreters but they even had a number of deaf employees."

He started applying online for almost any job that required his skills. It took a year but finally he got a call inviting him to interview for a job as an administrator at TD Insurance.

"About 60 people applied and the final list got down to 20. I was the only deaf applicant," he says.

He got the job and today, Ilyas, now 29, is married to his former fiancee and enormously pleased with his employer and the direction his career is taking.

"TD supplies all the support I need - interpreters, training, even mentoring," he says. "Most of my co-workers have even learned sign language. If I need to make a telephone call, one of them does it for me. Otherwise we use written notes and emails."

Ilyas is just one example of a corporate commitment not just to diversity but to inclusion, says Nancy Nazer, vice-president of corporate diversity and talent management at TD Bank.

The bottom line is that kind of commitment is just good business, she says. TD believes the faces of its staff should accurately reflect the faces of the communities it serves here and in the United States and Britain.

The bank's commitment to diversity reaches back almost four decades, when it began to recruit more women and offer them the same opportunities as men. Its formal diversity program, however, started in 2005 with the creation of the Diversity Leadership Council, Nazer says.

The council is chaired by Bharat Masrani, chief executive officer of the U.S. division, and includes 14 members - the heads of all business units globally. It meets eight to nine times a year to review progress of existing initiatives and approve new ones, she says.

Its top three priorities are expanding leadership opportunities for women and members of visible minorities; enhancing opportunities for the disabled and aboriginals; and creating a more inclusive environment for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender staff, she says.

"Today it is much more about inclusion," she says. "We believe we have effective diversity programs in place - although improving them is a never-ending job. The focus now, however, is on ensuring rewarding careers and a supportive work environment."

That means creating and supporting networking opportunities such as the women in leadership and the visible minority leadership programs. There are 1,300 members in the Employee Pride Network alone and the Aboriginal Employee Circle has raised and donated more than $1.5 million to aboriginal education initiatives.

As of Dec. 31, 2009 65.6 per cent of TD bank's staff is women and they hold 29.6 per cent of vice-presidential posts and above, says Nazer. Visible minorities represent 26.1 per cent of employees and 8.42 per cent of vice-president and above positions.

Aboriginals have 1.07 per cent of TD jobs and persons with disabilities represent 3.61 per cent.

"Diversity and inclusion are and will always be works in progress," says Nazer. "We know that as Canada changes we must as well."

Sohail Ilyas says Nazer's words are very encouraging to him.

"Being deaf I have always had to work much harder than others around me. I have had to learn five different forms of sign language, for example: Pakistani, Urdu, Canadian, American and now TD corporate terms.

"But I have received tremendous support from the company and from my co-workers and managers," he says.

"While diversity got me hired, inclusion is making me part of the team and offers me a chance for a terrific career."

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